Guest column: Keep our waterfront working

Not long ago I attended a Times Review forum on wooden boat building in Southold. Like the forums on Shelter Island, it offered an opportunity to illuminate some aspect of life here.

Roughly 100 people, including a fair number of Shelter Islanders, heard a panel discuss wooden boat building, maintenance and repair. Panelists included John Needham of Coecles Harbor Marina and Boatyard.

Wooden boat building and servicing honor the East End’s boating traditions and the maritime environment I’ve loved since childhood. But they do little to address where East End boating is headed.

Hinckley’s arrival, along with Blackstone’s acquisition of Safe Harbor facilities in Greenport, signals the increasing presence of luxury boating. I’ve kept a sailboat in one of Safe Harbor’s Greenport marinas since 1976. Barton & Gray’s presence points to something approaching an “Uber” boating environment for the well-heeled.

I’ve sailed these waters since I was 9. This is not the boating destination I knew as a child, or even as a young adult.

John and Peter Needham’s Coecles Harbor Marina and Boatyard and CH Marine have moved closer to this emerging market through luxury-performance boat building and servicing. But such locally owned businesses are increasingly an anomaly.

The planned sale of Steve Clarke’s Greenport Yacht & Shipbuilding Co., coupled with the buyer’s desire to maintain its marine connection, may well result in another facility oriented toward wealthier boat owners. The uncomfortable truth is that boating for people of modest means is fading away here.

It’s wonderful to celebrate wooden boat shipwrights. But future demand for marine services is likely to be driven increasingly by American Boat and Yacht Council-certified marine technicians with specialized expertise.

Patrick Brennan, like the other forum participants, approaches his craft as helping preserve the East End’s maritime heritage. I identify deeply with that heritage. But there is a parallel here with agriculture.

My wife was raised on the North Fork amid acres of potato fields. Her father chose not to continue the family’s farming tradition, and she went off to college and became a teacher. Yet respect for that farming work ethic ran deep. Eventually, many of those fields became vineyards, and agriculture evolved into agritourism.

Mr. Brennan spoke mournfully of how agricultural activities are now often scorned despite being permitted under current zoning. One could conclude that wooden-boat activities might similarly become obstructed, even when they represent a legitimate and historically important part of life here.

We are experiencing a population shift toward people who may appreciate the novelty of working on wooden boats, growing oysters, dredging for scallops or shucking clams, but who do not necessarily want those activities in their own backyards. Resolving that conflict will be a significant challenge if the East End is to retain more than a museum-like version of its maritime history.

Perhaps one role of a local newspaper is to bring these cultural conflicts into the open. Some might argue that readers have little interest in such questions. Perhaps so. But isn’t that precisely why they need to be placed squarely before an evolving East End population?

Twenty years ago, I served two terms as one of Shelter Island’s elected property assessors. During a revaluation of commercial property, John and Peter Needham met with me to discuss the newly assessed value of their family business.

They were understandably concerned about what the new assessment might mean. To underscore their property’s considerable value, I suggested — not as a serious recommendation — that they could sell to a developer, retire and be extremely comfortable for the rest of their lives.

They looked at me in astonishment and said, “This is what we love.”

That response has stayed with me for more than two decades.

The challenge for the East End is not simply preserving wooden boats, shipwrights, farms or fishermen as relics of another time. It is finding a way for people who love these things — and the work that sustains them — to continue doing them here.

Mr. Cronin served in Shelter Island town government for some 20 years as an EMT and appointed town engineer. He was a North Ferry captain for many years.